Analysis & Opinion

NEW YORK Aug 20 (Reuters) - Magazine publisher Conde Nast
announced a major partnership with Amazon on Tuesday in
which the Internet retailer will handle print and digital
subscriptions for its stable of glossy publications like Vogue,
Wired and Vanity Fair.

Conde Nast is the first magazine publisher to collaborate
with Amazon on this type of service, a move that will simplify
its subscription process, which currently involves direct mail
and stacks of magazine insert cards.

Amazon will allow consumers to purchase, manage and renew
their magazine subscriptions under a new "all access" plan for
both print and digital editions using their Amazon account.
People can still go to Conde Nast directly or to its other
partners including Apple Inc.

The digital subscriptions will be made available on several
mobile platforms including the Kindle Fire, Apple's iPad and
Google's Android tablets and phones.

It will introduce Conde Nast to new readers through Amazon's
more than 200 million customer accounts worldwide.

"We are using the partnership with Amazon to make
purchasing and renewing subscriptions as easy as humanly
possible," said Bob Sauerberg, president of Conde Nast, in an
interview last Wednesday.

"We want to go from selling print subscriptions to selling
access to all our content."

Conde Nast will offer introductory bundled rates for $6 or
less for six months for both print and digital versions of
Vogue, Glamour, Bon Appetit, Lucky, Golf Digest, Vanity Fair and
Wired. It plans to roll out its other 11 consumer titles
including the New Yorker later in the year.

"Magazines have real deep value in both formats," said Russ
Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content at Amazon. "A lot
of consumers want to keep one foot in both camps."

Conde Nast's total circulation, including print and digital,
is about 18.5 million copies, according to the Alliance for
Audited Media. About 4 percent of its total subscriber base is
digital.

STRIKING DEALS

Sauerberg and Grandinetti started talks about a potential
partnership over breakfast during the magazine trade
organization MPA's annual conference last year.

"For years we have worked hard at trying to make buying
anything really easy," Grandinetti said. "Even though people
really love magazines, I would not say they love the process of
maintaining their subscription."

Increasing digital copies is a key part of the magazine's
industry future success as more people choose to read on
smartphones and tablets, while advertisers are placing more
dollars toward digital displays at the expense of print.

At the same time, mobile device makers have a huge appetite
for media content including magazines, newspapers and TV shows
to spur people to buy tablets and smartphones.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos agreed to purchase The Washington
Post from the Graham family for $250 million, igniting
speculation that Bezos could transform the paper into a
streaming news service delivered to tablets, computers and
phones.

Grandinetti would not comment on any plans involving the
Post, adding that the paper is solely under Bezos's ownership.

Even as the giants of tech court publishers, media companies
have had an uneasy relationship with Silicon Valley after
watching the music industry dwindle as people flocked to buy
songs on iTunes for much less than the price of a CD.

For example, Time Inc, a division of Time Warner the
largest magazine publisher in the U.S, was one of the last
holdouts to join Apple's newsstand. The standoff was because the
world's largest technology company did not want to share
subscriber data with the publisher of Sports Illustrated and
People.

Subscriber information is critical to magazine publishers
who use it to give advertisers a better picture about their
readers.

Conde Nast, though, is usually one of the first to wade into
the water with innovations - for instance it was the first to
offer subscriptions through Apple's newsstand with the New
Yorker.

"We really try and connect with the tech companies on the
West Coast," Sauerberg said. "We know what we're good at and
they know what they are good at."

In Conde Nast's agreement with Amazon, Sauerberg said that
Amazon is providing the same consumer data that Conde Nast would
get when a reader subscribes directly through the company.

Amazon is taking a cut of the subscription revenue though
both companies declined to provide further details. In other
arrangements Amazon typically takes 30 percent.
(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Edited by Ronald
Grover and Ken Wills)